Clock! sinister god, frightening, impassive,
whose hand threatens us and says, “Remember!
Soon throbbing aches will be planted
in your fearful heart as if in a target.

Mist-like Pleasure will fly off toward the horizon
like a sylph at the back of the stage;
each instant eats away a bite of the delight
each man is given for his whole season.

Three thousand six hundred times an hour, the second
whispers “Remember!” With its insect voice,
NOW says quickly, “I am in the past,
and I have pumped away your life with my dreadful siphon!”

Souviens-toi! Remember! Prodigal! Esto memor!
(My metal throat speaks all languages.)
Minutes, foolish mortal, are the base mineral
that you must not let go of without extracting their gold!

Remember that Time is a greedy gambler
who wins without cheating, always! It’s the law,
day declines; night grows; remember!
The abyss is always hungry; the water-clock runs dry.

Soon the hour will sound when divine Chance
or august Virtue, your still-virgin spouse,
where Repentance itself (oh! the last refuge!),
where everything will tell you: “Die, old coward! It’s too late!

Meditation on the Word Need

The problem with words of emotion
is how easily meaning drains
from their fiddle-sweet sounds
and they become empty instruments.
I can say love
and mean desire to give—
open-handed, open-hearted—
or I am drawn to the light
shining from your soul—
or my life is empty without you—
or I want to run my hands
and mouth down the length of you—
or all of these at once.

Need, now, is a plain word.
I need a nail to hang this picture.
I need money to pay my bills.
I need air and light,
water and food,
shelter from storm and sun and cold.
To be healthy,
to be sane,
to survive,
I need you.

Linda Rodriguez

La Beauté

fair as a dream in stone I loom afar
— mortals! — with dazzling breast where, bruised in turn
all poets fall in silence, doomed to burn
with love eternal as the atoms are.

white as a swan I throne with heart of snow
in azure space, a sphynx that none divine,
no hateful motion mars my lovely line,
nor tears nor laughter shall I ever know.

and poets, lured by this magnificence
— this grandeur proud as Parian monuments —
toil all their days like martyrs in a spell;

lovers bewitched are they, for I possess
pure mirrors harbouring worlds of loveliness:
my wide, wide eyes where fires eternal dwell!

Too much work at work

Too much work in studio

Too much work in project management

I am tired and want to soar….

Blog will have to pause until more frocks are done.